World’s largest Bilobe-Liquid Gas Storage Tanks

Sinopacific builds cargo tanks for 9.686 cubic meter with BV-ClassThe future of the Natural Gas Shipping keeps a majority of the shipping industry busy. Again and again new equipment and machinery is developed. Such as in China. At present there arise the largest Bilobe-Liquid Gas Storage tanks.They are nearing completion at China’s Sinopacific yard and will be installed in a series of four 27,500 cu m semi-refrigerated LNG/Ethylene carriers building for Denmark’s Shipping Company Evergas. Each of the IMO Type C Bilobe tanks has a capacity of 9,686 cu m. Two of the tanks in each vessel will be supplemented by a third conical Type C cargo tank and a smaller LNG fuel tank on the deck of the vessels. International classification society Bureau Veritas is classing the world’s largest Bilobe-Gas Tanks.

According to Bureau Veritas, these tanks are pushing at the frontier of small scale LNG transportation. They build on experience with ethylene transportation and can carry LPG or LNG at five bar pressure. That allows for the development of flexible ships which will meet the demands of the new LNG trades which are constantly emerging. Ralph Juhl, Vice President, Evergas, said: “Our new ships have to work in the roughest seas in the world so we wanted to build them tough and without a lot of deck clutter and exposed systems. These Bilobe-Tanks enable us to have a flat main deck and they give us much better carrying capacity compared to cylindrical tanks in the same size ship,” he continues: “The vessels’ stability and damage stability was also a matter of additional efforts on the drawing board.”Evergas is building the ships at Sinopacific to BV class for 2015 delivery to service the trade between Marcus Hook, Philadelphia and Rafnes in Norway.